"I believe she is running this whole show," he said. "She never contradicted us once. But what is she playing at?" But since collectively they could not have mustered one-third of Lady Ardingly's brains, it was no wonder that none of them could suggest an answer. But as he handed Blanche into her carriage, Arthur summed up the situation. "The fact is that it takes four or five of us to understand one-half of what she says," he remarked. CHAPTER XIV The General Election had been definitely fixed to begin in the second week in July, and consequently soon after Ascot politicians of all sorts and shades of opinion were sedulously flying about the country, busy recounting to the wondering provinces how grossly their opponents had misrepresented their aims and tactics, and proving in an array of terms which beggared the dictionary, that the country could only be saved by the united voice of the people declaring that they would record a firm and combined vote. South Africa was, of course, the chosen battlefield of both parties; here each was determined to fight the matter out (this was the only matter on which they were agreed), and the speed with which the opposing armies mobilized out there was as remarkable as their manoeuvres when arrived. Some charged through the country already peopled in their minds with the families of reservists, and dotted with happy homesteads, over which waved the fair golden corn, while on the hills of the Witwatersrand the great mills poured out their millions, and those who had been in arms were already spending happy Sunday evenings with their brother Boers, singing hymns to the accompaniment of the vrow's harmonium, and zealously marrying her buxom daughters. Gold paved the streets of Johannesburg, and the curbstones thereof were diamonds, and Paul Kruger and Mr. Leyds fell on their bended knees and, with tears of gratitude in their grateful eyes, blessed the names of Mr. Rhodes and the Colonial Secretary. The Union Jack waved on all the winds of heaven, and every Englishman in that happy land beat his rifle into a pea-shooter for his infant children--half Boer, half British--and ate his roast beef under his fig-tree.